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Any service provider that does this will wind up paying higher carriage fees charged by the broadcasters to make up for the lost ad revenue and right into the bills of the subscribers.

This is finacially bad for everyone...except maybe Dish.

Mike

You must be of the belief that we should have more government in our lives. I once witnessed a civil case in your home state, Connecticut. A young couple were divorcing. There were no children involved nor was there any animosity between the parties. They were very civil and respectful toward each other. Neither wanted anything from the other. Both were gainfully employed and could provide for themselves. They were simply not compatible and wished to sell their home, divide the profit equally between them and to go their own way and start over. Their attorney's presented the agreement expecting the judge to agree. He did not. He said the wife was entitled to more than half of the profits of the sale of the home and should consider other entitlements as well. The dead silence and look of astonishment on everyone's faces said it all. Judges don't always make a fair or wise decision. Better to settle your differences out of court.

You must be of the belief that we should have more government in our lives. <snip>.

Wow! Jump to conclusions much?

This isn’t a political discussion. My point is purely economic.

If the broadcasters are going to lose ad revenue because a service provider is going automatically skip commercials then the broadcaster is going to make it up by charging that service provider more in carriage fees. I have no doubt the service provider will pass the increase on to the subscriber.

Or, do you think the broadcasters will simply eat the loss of revenue? IMHO, not likely.

IOW, you can’t mess with someone’s income and expect it isn’t gonna cost you more for their service. If it costs you more it’s gonna cost your customers more.

Mike

Edited by Mike Bertelson, 29 May 2012 - 06:55 AM.

µßSince it costs 1.66¢ to produce a penny, my 2¢ worth is really 3.32¢ worth. That 3.32¢ is my own and not the 3.32¢ of DIRECTV, Dish, or anyone else for that matter.

Or Dish could simply say they're not carrying locals anymore and use the bandwidth for something else. That would end the retrans gravy train and suddenly the locals would have bigger things to worry about than a few people skipping commercials, which most people do anyways.

Or Dish could simply say they're not carrying locals anymore and use the bandwidth for something else. That would end the retrans gravy train and suddenly the locals would have bigger things to worry about than a few people skipping commercials, which most people do anyways.

Then what happens to people like me who can't get locals OTA. I have to have a service provider in order to get locals as does everyone in South East CT.

I could be wrong but I don't think any service provider would implement a policy that would potentially lose millions of customers.

Both Dish and DIRECTV spent years building up local channels to be competitive. I, like others in my area, waited until one of the satellite providers started carrying locals before switching.

I doubt any service provider is going to stop carrying locals as long as the competition is carrying them. IMHO, it ain’t gonna happen.

Mike

µßSince it costs 1.66¢ to produce a penny, my 2¢ worth is really 3.32¢ worth. That 3.32¢ is my own and not the 3.32¢ of DIRECTV, Dish, or anyone else for that matter.

You think even if this didn't exist the exact same high carriage fees wouldn't be charged onto the consumers?

I think the carriage fees would go even higher. It gives companies like Lin & Tribune the perfect excuse to charge Dish, or any provider using this kind of technology, an additional premium on top of the usual fee.

You think they wouldn't try to squeeze more money out of this situation?

Mike

Edited by Mike Bertelson, 29 May 2012 - 08:36 AM.

µßSince it costs 1.66¢ to produce a penny, my 2¢ worth is really 3.32¢ worth. That 3.32¢ is my own and not the 3.32¢ of DIRECTV, Dish, or anyone else for that matter.

Then what happens to people like me who can't get locals OTA. I have to have a service provider in order to get locals as does everyone in South East CT.

I could be wrong but I don't think any service provider would implement a policy that would potentially lose millions of customers.

Both Dish and DIRECTV spent years building up local channels to be competitive. I, like others in my area, waited until one of the satellite providers started carrying locals before switching.

I doubt any service provider is going to stop carrying locals as long as the competition is carrying them. IMHO, it ain’t gonna happen.

Mike

We would have to go back to cable,in fact where I live I'm between two cities both DirecTV&DISH cannot offer me both cities local channels,only one city.Cable can and does have both cities locals in their guide.

I think the carriage fees would go even higher. It gives companies like Lin & Tribune the perfect excuse to charge Dish, or any provider using this kind of technology, an additional premium on top of the usual fee.

You think they would try to squeeze more money out of this situation?

Mike

Sure the fees will go higher because once a number is reached of how many subscribers have this feature,the advertisers will start leaving so an increase in carriage fees will be put into the contracts to survive.

If you're not willing to stand up to the networks then you may be as big a part of the problem as their greed is.

At some point, people have to say 'enough is enough'.

An interesting point but not very realistic.

If you’re a service provider all you care about is what the other guy is doing. If all the other service providers carry those locals then you gotta have them too.

You can rail on about “enough is enough” all you want but in order to stay competitive a service provider has to keep up with the Joneses.

Outside of forums like this one, the vast majority of subs have no idea how pervasive the problem is. Heck most subs don’t even know this is a subject about which they need to be an informed consumer let alone be outraged by it. Until you can get subs across all providers to say “NO” nothing is going to change.

But maybe you can get 'locals' from really, really, really, really far away where Mork and ET call home.

I have no idea what this means but ummm...okay.

Mike

µßSince it costs 1.66¢ to produce a penny, my 2¢ worth is really 3.32¢ worth. That 3.32¢ is my own and not the 3.32¢ of DIRECTV, Dish, or anyone else for that matter.

We would have to go back to cable,in fact where I live I'm between two cities both DirecTV&DISH cannot offer me both cities local channels,only one city.Cable can and does have both cities locals in their guide.

My locals are either the four networks from CT or RI. One set of networks from each State but I prefer the locals from my own State.

However, DIRECTV does carry a couple of the RI networks in SD. I’m not sure why but we have them.

Mike

µßSince it costs 1.66¢ to produce a penny, my 2¢ worth is really 3.32¢ worth. That 3.32¢ is my own and not the 3.32¢ of DIRECTV, Dish, or anyone else for that matter.

Or Dish could simply say they're not carrying locals anymore and use the bandwidth for something else. That would end the retrans gravy train and suddenly the locals would have bigger things to worry about than a few people skipping commercials, which most people do anyways.

IF there was an easy OTA solution for everyone, this would work. But alas there is not.

I know for me it takes 2 antennas, a power booster and a combiner to get it done. Too much work for the average homeowner or tech. But if pulling in OTA signals were as easy as aligning a dish, then it would work great. Both DISH and DirecTV have shown they can integrate OTA feeds into receivers and DVR's. But instead they decided to spend $$$$ on satellites instead of developing a comprehensive OTA plan. But like Mike B pointed out, some people can't get OTA no matter what.

The true solution actually would have been government intervention at the beginning. Instead of licensing both carriers to carry locals, a joint provider should have been created to beam down locals. The feeds would have been just like locals where anyone could have bought a satellite converter box and received the signals for free. DISH and DirecTV could have integrated them into their current receivers and we would not have had any of this holding customers hostage.

I keep wondering if this is an issue that Charlie should be suing or getting sued for is worth it. Other than a small marketing message, is this such a big deal that you want to spend millions on?

IMO, not to me. But then again, this is Charlie!

I don't believe it is and here's why.Primetime Anytime discriminates because it's not recording all the networks in Primetime so the "other"networks are not showing an increase in viewership like the four networks being recorded.

AutoHop will cause advertisers to spend their advertising dollars elsewhere where the consumer cannot use a feature to"eliminate" commercials.So an increase in carriage fees will be needed for the networks to survive.

I have normally supported DISH but this idea I have to say"What are you thinking"!.

It’s an all or nothing proposition that interferes with the largest money making portion of the networks’ day.

You can argue semantics all you want but it permanently removes eyeballs from the commercials effectively eliminating a significant portion of the target demographics the advertisers are aiming for.

If Dish's technology remains effective and spreads to other providers or Tivo, the problem may become real. But today it isn't real.

The network broadcasters likely have two problems in going to court now:

Most Hopper users were DVR users before they changed to Hopper, so the once versus 20 button pushes per show is going to be a lame argument.

While C3 (commercial views within the first three days of a show's airing) is now used in ad sales, the primary determinant to measure a show's success or failures is Live+same day viewing by people ages 18-49, the demo that's shrinking the fastest because they have alternatives to traditional TV. The media biz term used now for the 18-25 age group is not "cord cutters" but "cord nevers."

This is going to be an argument that will run through the courts while commercial viewing on traditional TV continues to disappear.

"In a hundred years there'll be a whole new set of people."
"Always poke the bears. They sleep too much for their own good."

If Dish's technology remains effective and spreads to other providers or Tivo, the problem may become real. But today it isn't real.

The network broadcasters likely have two problems in going to court now:

Most Hopper users were DVR users before they changed to Hopper, so the once versus 20 button pushes per show is going to be a lame argument.

While C3 (commercial views within the first three days of a show's airing) is now used in ad sales, the primary determinant to measure a show's success or failures is Live+same day viewing by people ages 18-49, the demo that's shrinking the fastest because they have alternatives to traditional TV. The media biz term used now for the 18-25 age group is not "cord cutters" but "cord nevers."

This is going to be an argument that will run through the courts while commercial viewing on traditional TV continues to disappear.

Oh I believe that in fact like alot of people have said the networks will probably insert the commercials into the program like they used to.Then that would take care of AutoHop and the Skip and the FFW button being used at all.

As far as the "customer demanding" or even "requesting" this feature... I could be wrong, but in all of my time at DBSTalk I can't remember anything like "AutoHop" being requested much if at all. Maybe I'm not remembering correctly, but it doesn't seem like most customers have an issue with commercials to the degree they would request a feature like this that potentially will cause more harm than it helps.

If Dish's technology remains effective and spreads to other providers or Tivo, the problem may become real. But today it isn't real.

The network broadcasters likely have two problems in going to court now:

Most Hopper users were DVR users before they changed to Hopper, so the once versus 20 button pushes per show is going to be a lame argument.

While C3 (commercial views within the first three days of a show's airing) is now used in ad sales, the primary determinant to measure a show's success or failures is Live+same day viewing by people ages 18-49, the demo that's shrinking the fastest because they have alternatives to traditional TV. The media biz term used now for the 18-25 age group is not "cord cutters" but "cord nevers."

This is going to be an argument that will run through the courts while commercial viewing on traditional TV continues to disappear.

You’re right, it currently isn’t real.

However, the networks will treat it as if is a threat because if they don’t then it will spread to other providers/TiVo.

From the broadcasters point of view it’s as real now as it ever will be in the future.

Mike

µßSince it costs 1.66¢ to produce a penny, my 2¢ worth is really 3.32¢ worth. That 3.32¢ is my own and not the 3.32¢ of DIRECTV, Dish, or anyone else for that matter.